Soul

Lifting an arm, he moved to hit her. Gabriel blocked him. For a moment the two men stared at each other, then Klaus backed off.

‘You’re Naomi’s son, aren’t you?’

‘Are you okay?’

‘What do you fucking think?! She tried to kill me! I want that gun confiscated and I will be pressing charges! You can testify for me.’

‘Testify? I saw nothing.’ Gabriel turned to Julia, still pressed against the sideboard in shock. ‘Julia?’

Julia looked at Klaus—he was just an ordinary fallible man in his early forties, with bad skin and a receding hairline. She thought about his inability to be honest, his fatal need to please to the detriment of his own personality, his lack of professional discipline. He was a chameleon, a victim of his own moral and emotional weakness. And, for the first time, she pitied Carla.

‘You know what? I think we’re all finished now.’ She pushed her way past the two men and went into the kitchen. Leaning against the sink, she began to shake uncontrollably.

‘I had this sudden feeling that you were in danger. That sample you gave me to test…’ Gabriel stood in the doorway, only dimly aware that he was shouting. He was angry, angry with the horror of it all, and his voice boomed out, full of questions. ‘It tested positive! I checked it three times, and it came up positive every time. It’s definitely that sequence, Julia, but what’s really odd is that it’s female DNA.’

Sweat ran in rivulets down Gabriel’s forehead, plastering his hair to his skin. In that moment she saw the man he would become.

‘It’s you, isn’t it? It was your blood.’

‘I made a decision,’ Julia said, her voice deceptive in its calmness. ‘I guess you could say that nurture triumphed over nature.’

Later that night, Julia sat in the lounge room, the tape cassette player on the coffee table before her. After she’d promised to see a psychiatrist, Klaus had finally agreed not to press charges.

She glanced up at the portrait of Lavinia Huntington, then, her finger pressed down on the erase button; she wiped all the cassettes to Klaus. At last her anger had begun to fade.

78

Newgate Prison, 1862

LAVINIA SAT IN THE CORNER OF the prison cell, on the narrow wooden bench that ran alongside the scarred and uneven wall. A tin bucket filled with water stood in the opposite corner; a small barred window, framing her last afternoon, set high into the wall above her. Blindly, her fingers traced the initials carved into the wooden surface she was sitting on: initials of the women who had been hanged before her. Shivering, she felt all of them in the room with her, a profound mass terror seeping up through the stone floor. Where would she find redemption now, except in the memory of those who would live on?

‘Lavinia.’

He stood on the other side of the bars, smaller than she remembered, his hair now greyer. There was no judgement in his eyes, only a weighty sadness.

‘Father!’ She was at the bars in a moment. Their hands intertwined; weeping, she lifted them to her face.

‘Child, I should have taken you in when you asked me. This I shall regret until my dying day. Now compose yourself, I have Aidan waiting outside.’

As the gaoler went to fetch her son, Lavinia wiped her eyes on the hessian skirt then smoothed down her unruly hair. Somewhere in the shadowy corridor there was the creak of a heavy door.

Bewildered and wide-eyed, the child was carried in by a matronly prison officer. As they drew nearer, Lavinia could see Aidan was close to tears. Her cell door was unlocked and her father stepped inside.

‘I shall collect him shortly,’ the prison guard announced before delivering the child into Lavinia’s arms.

‘Mama.’ Aidan wrapped his arms tightly around her neck. She buried her face in his ringlets, the tiny weight of him dissolving all that lay before her.

‘Mama’s going away, but you will see her again soon, I promise,’ she whispered

She looked at her father. ‘He will come into his inheritance when he is eighteen. My will is with Mr Cohen. I have left instructions as to who will be his ward after your death.’

‘Until then I shall take him back to Ireland, and I promise you he shall have the best care and education a child could wish for.’

‘Thank you, Dada.’

Hearing the childish name, the Reverend broke down weeping.

It is almost dawn. I thank God that my stay in this formidable hell has been brief, only days since my sentencing. In a few hours I shall no longer be of this world; it has been a short life—a mere twenty years—and although my act was calculated, I have known since I was a child that I was capable of such deeds. I am guilty of loving passionately; I am guilty of jealousy and romantic ideals. I am also guilty of murder, but I pray that you, my invisible and silent companion, will be humane in your judgement.